Reverie Game Review – Nintendo Switch/PS4/Vita

reverie
it’s the latest game from new zealand-based indie developer rainbite
is what I would call a Zelda like game it’s heavily influenced by adventure
games of the past and features an overworld to explore with dungeons and
collectables to find the game starts off by telling The Legend of Heke the
founder of Toromi Island so how can his three brothers went fishing and this
result in Heke’s line catching onto the island and pulling it up it’s got to
be about a quadrillion tons very strong guy anyway his brother has got salty
about this and drowned him leading to all four of their spirits haunting the
island for all of eternity it’s quite story already and soon we
were introduced to the protagonist Tai who is on a boat to the very same Island
to spend some time with his grandparents yeah I love this guy so we’re introduced
to Grandpa tells you to explore the town a bit you can explore the beach talk to
locals and you have a rolling move to get around faster if your map starts off
blank and it gradually fills up as you explore the island which is nice
exploring the town we find various people and locations including a store
and an arcade but this early in the game you’re dead broke so you can’t play in
the arcade games yet so and the Grandpa’s house we find out that the
path to the volcano has been blocked off I’m sorry but why would anyone want to
even go to the volcano I mean it’s a volcano so moving on you get a cricket
bat as a gift from your grandparents which can be swung around so this is
already the most new zealand game i’ve ever played
after getting the lantern for grandpa he proceeds to ask Tai to go to the
basement to get a book so entering the basement we can see that it’s clearly an
old-school dungeon like Zelda and boy does he have a rodent problem the
basement is infested with ferrets rats bees and giant mutant hedgehogs and it
feels like the basement is enormous compared to the rest of the house so in
these dungeons you have to clear enemies by hitting them with the bat you collect
keys and you open doors and if you get injured you can heal yourself by eating
some pizza that happens to be lying around and dropped by rats and bees and
there were plenty of puzzles scattered across the dungeon after getting the
boss key we can finally enter the boss store which holds a
evil washing machine it’s simple enough Dodger clothes and don’t get crushed
after being the boss we find out that it is actually a spirit uh and it tells you
to seek out Hecky and his brother spirits and defeat them because they
were causing havoc around the island so returning the book to Grandpa he tells
us a story of a flying Kiwi he doesn’t acknowledge it his basement is full of
wild animals and demons he just stands there so he then tells you to get lost
and this is literally the last time you ever need to talk to him he just has no
significance for a story after this point which is a bit unfortunate so he
says the same thing over and over again when you come back and he doesn’t even
tell you to do anything after that so like grandpa said we’d go out and
talk to people and start exploring the island with no adult supervision which
is inhabited by lots of interesting characters and of course tons of animals
that you can kill eventually you get a yo-yo from a reclusive conspiracy
theorist man this game is talking koalas – now the yo-yo can be used to stun
enemies we eventually find our second dungeon that has slimes that can only be
beaten by being stunned with the yo-yo first and then attacked making the yo-yo
a necessity for this type of combat this dungeon requires you to find leaves to
build a plant that you can climb and it introduces a new weapon dart gun
the dark down shoots projectiles and is going to be used for a lot of puzzles
and long-range combat but you have to restock on ammo by attacking enemies and
the crates and finding more darts eventually we head back to the arcade
with the money that we collected from all the rodents we killed Brian here
tells us that if we beat his high score he’ll give us feather wow what a great
prize of feather well in this game feathers are the main collectible and
you basically have to look around and complete odd tasks for our NPCs to
collect them all the arcade games star blazer has its own scoreboard and it’s a
space shooter similar to Galaga now it actually gets very addicting and there
trophy for getting a high score so after clearing dungeons you’re pretty much
told where to go based on X on your map which I personally feel might be a bit
hand hole D I would have preferred if characters in the game gave you subtle
hints of where to go next through their own dialogue rather than leave a big X
on your map with no further explanation of why you’re going somewhere there’s
really no reason why you’re going anywhere
the closest thing you get is a little girl asking you to meet here at the
beach which is where you help help her build a sandcastle and it turns out
sandcastle you build with her is the next dungeon which I thought was
interesting so up until now the formula is to find new dungeons unlock new
weapons and abilities in these dungeons and use them to navigate puzzles on your
way to the final boss and believe me when I say that these puzzles are very
challenging at times requiring you to use various tools and really think
outside the box with them it’s very refreshing to see game is taking puzzles
seriously where most games these days are quite easy with their puzzles
requiring there’s a few seconds of thinking while this game can have you
stuck for half an hour on each puzzle before getting it you eventually get to
a new island where some people ask a child to perform an exorcism on their
home and you find ghosts that look like they should be hosting a killing game
which leads you to the next dungeon which is full of ghosts and puzzles
involving a rotating floor there are a lot of secrets in the overworld you mita
talking microwave which who wants to play air hockey with you and talking
Kiwis and even a fisherman it doesn’t have much luck cashing fish there’s even
a forum of the residents ask a child to exterminate a rats for them these are
some responsible people here the final dungeon is an incredibly complex maze of
multiple floors very challenging puzzles and difficult enemies I spent well over
an hour getting through the entire dungeon and it was one of the best Mayan
exercises I’ve seen recently with complex puzzles that require multiple
tools and a lot of thinking outside of the box after being this dungeon you’ve
beaten the game and you have seen the credits at this point it may feel a bit
short but there’s still some postgame content including finding all the rest
of the feathers helping the fisherman out talking to the Kiwis and exploring
the bonus dungeon and open of credits the bonus dungeon is
basically a challenge no type of level no puzzle is just enemies attacking from
every corner and it’s very difficult in conclusion I think this is a nice game
very reminiscent of old and action-adventure games with interesting
characters and fun game way it took me about seven hours to 100% the game as so
it is an incredibly long either it’s a well worth the price and I’d recommend
it